Acquisition schemes in third generation wireless systems

cdma2000 [1] and WCDMA [2] are two standards presently being deployed for third generation wireless systems. This paper analyzes the acquisition schemes of both systems, and characterizes their performance. There are significant differences in the two standards, one of which is that the cdma2000 standard requires synchronous base stations, while WCDMA does not. It has been proposed that the next generation phones should be capable of operating under both conditions, and thus raises a crucial issue — handoff between synchronous and asynchronous base stations. This paper looks at this problem, analyzes the two cases and proposes a method of acquisition that meets the required criteria.